The Doom That Came to Konoha
by Strop
Summary: In which Doctor Kabuto Yakushi acquires a new client, pokes his nose where it doesn't belong, and accidentally unleashes eldritch horrors upon the city of Konoha. [Pseudo-Victorian Eldritch Horror AU.]
1. Chapter 1

theres not enough good kabuto fic so i decided im gonna Get What I Want nd now this exists

* * *

The warning comes in three parts. By the time the third arrives, it is too late for him.

Kabuto's new client lives at the east end of the city, beyond the failing railway lines and the slums that eat at the edges. The house juts out of the barren landscape like a bone through the skin, walls disgustingly pale and bloated between layers of flaking paint. He counts six gables and three chimneys as he walks up the hill, and stops after that, because for all its antiquity the house is as pleasant to look at as a canker sore. Curious that a man wealthy enough to hire a personal physician cannot spare the money to tend to his home. It may be, he decides as he slips through the front gate, that there is no point in repairing the outside of a house you never leave. (He'd been asked if he knew anyone who ran market errands. He did, but did not recommend them.)

The drive is dense with wilted magnolia petals and empty of any sort of vehicle. The home of a true hermit, then—or some sort of luddite, unless he's missed a car tucked away behind the relentless overgrowth of hydrangeas and maple.

The door is old; the knocker is new, or simply well cared-for: a twining silver serpent with its jaws clenched around the ring. He knocks once, twice, three times—and waits.

Movement behind the dusty windows. The boy who opens the door is pale and gaunt, the lines of his cheekbones uncomfortably clear. Practically translucent. "You're late," he mumbles, ushering Kabuto inside and staring at a point just past his head. His knuckles are mottled with bruises. Kabuto frowns, and files the boy's appearance away for later comparison against a list of symptoms.

"Your master doesn't exactly make himself easy to find." He had to endure three bus rides to get here, the last of which stopped halfway through the lower districts and declared that anyone going further would have to walk. The mud caked on Kabuto's boots will take at least an hour to slough off. "Why live here when there are better accommodations inside the city?" The answers are obvious: dislike of city air, of city people, of city gossip; catering to a personal aesthetic of solitude; something to hide. But Kabuto has found that sometimes, the measure of a man lies in what he tells his servants, or at least what he lets them believe. How much trust he places in those closest to him.

The boy shrugs, and lets out several watery coughs as he shuts the door. (Noted. Filed.)

Grey sunlight filters in through a pair of dusty skylights, but Kabuto still finds himself squinting through the gloom to make out the edges of things. The signs of casual wealth are scattered through this room, and the next—intricate rugs with tasseled edges; velvet drapes, blocking out the light of ceiling-high windows; enough books to fill his personal library ten times over. And everywhere, serpents, or something like them. Carved into the banister, woven into the edges of carpets in writhing knots..

"What's your name?" Kabuto asks as they move through the foyer, down a wide hall. The walls are lined with zoological oddities. A preserved turtle with two heads peers at him from between jars of oil, their contents hidden behind the yellowing glass. He'd almost be disturbed, if he weren't used to similar sights in the basement of the medical university—and his own offices.

"Kimimaro."

"And you're Orochimaru's—"

"My ward," says a voice, and Kimimaro shuffles to a halt.

Orochimaru stands at the head of a staircase that might be considered grand, if it were not, like the rest of the house, coated with a layer of silvery grime. He is a tall man; statuesque. Pale, almost fittingly, as marble, with a face too perfect not to have been partially painted on. Kabuto thinks of the mud on his boots—mud he's inevitably tracked across this man's fine carpets—and about the fact that he hasn't had time to bathe today; files the insecurity away to contemplate later. He doesn't have the time to waste comparing his lifestyle to his patients', especially when they're paying him such substantial sums.

Kimimaro stutters up the steps, and Orochimaru bends to receive a mumbled word; responds in kind, so softly that Kabuto would have to make an unfortunately conspicuous eavesdropper of himself to catch the content. A comforting brush of the shoulder, and the boy is ushered off to parts unknown.

"Is he ill?" asks Kabuto, nodding after him. "I can have a look, if you'd like. Make sure it's nothing serious."

"Oh, it's rather serious," says Orochimaru, descending. Silk trails down the steps behind him, disgustingly opulent. "But there's nothing you'd be able to do for him, I'm afraid. Something in the bones. I've been treating him regularly, but I doubt he has much longer." He says it casually, like a grocer contemplating the tail end of his stock of meat.

Kabuto raises an eyebrow. "You practice?"

"I dabble." Orochimaru gestures at the collection against the walls, and sighs almost wistfully. "Kimimaro was such an interesting case, I couldn't help myself. It's an experimental treatment—a little outside your field."

'Experimental' could mean anything, from mutilative surgery to the herbal tinctures so commonly thrown together by Konoha housewives to clear the sinuses and soothe sore throats. There is merit in traditional remedies, certainly—in the hands of a qualified practitioner. Not, he thinks, some woman hoping rhubarb will cure her waistline because she read about it in the local rag. (Though it might, as it's rather difficult to put on weight when everything you eat now goes straight through to the other end.)

'Outside your field' implies it's none of his business, which means it most certainly is.

"He should be resting," says Kabuto.

"He does," says Orochimaru. "But given how little time he has left, it feels almost cruel to force him into it. So I let him wander as he pleases." He chuckles. "Keeps the place lively."

"Is he dying?"

"Near enough." Kabuto recognizes the sort of vagueness that means 'stop prying.' And he will stop. Being obvious about it, that is.

Orochimaru gestures for him to follow. "Come," he says. "I wouldn't want you to think me rude enough to keep a guest standing about."

The corridor they walk down is cramped and dim, and smells faintly of mold. It's a smell that only grows stronger the deeper into the house they go, until Kabuto is sure there must be some sort of infestation at hand—and then it vanishes, all too suddenly, as he crosses the doorway into the sitting room. As though it was sucked back into the walls. (The incense fogging the room would certainly help, too.)

It's as opulent as the rest of the house, decorated in shades of violet and grey. The serpents are here, too: embroidered into cushions and carved into the bricks above a fireplace blackened with soot. One of the far windows is thrown wide open to let in a breeze that stinks faintly of sewage and—unless Kabuto's mind is playing tricks on him—brine. The ocean is miles away behind the Wall, which consumes the distant landscape.

"Not a very pleasant view," he remarks. The Wall is a hundred feet high, a dark grey smear across the horizon.

"But it's unavoidable, isn't it?" says Orochimaru, settling into an armchair and gesturing for Kabuto to join him. "It lurks no matter where you look—and it's better," he adds, "than the alternative. It doesn't do you much good to watch the people crawling through their own filth day after day, except to remind you of where you'd rather be." He sniffs. "Still, I expect you hardly notice it by now, don't you?"

It takes Kabuto a moment to realize he means the Wall, not the people. "Oh?" he says, taking a seat. "Yes, it does tend to fade into the background." Hardly visible from the inner city, on particularly hazy days, and in some places the houses run right up against it, teetering upwards on wooden struts and pressing against the stone like rats attempting to crawl free of the sewer. Defiant in the face of God—or gods, or simply the city watch. "Do you know the history?"

"Built up by the Fourth before his death, wasn't it? Just before the tragedy in Suna. Expert timing." Orochimaru chuckles. "Some say he knew what was coming."

"Then he did what was best for the people, didn't he?"

"Didn't he?" echoes Orochimaru. "I wonder..."

"Surely you didn't call me all the way here to discuss outdated politics," says Kabuto, adjusting his glasses. He doesn't have much of an opinion, either way. He's inside the Wall, not out, and that's all that matters. "And if it's not for the boy—"

The clatter of fine china interrupts him, as a fiery-headed young woman all but storms into the room, setting the tea tray down on the table in front of him with a delicacy her demeanor does not suggest. The cups rattle anyways, and Orochimaru's lip curls, ever so slightly.

"Some tea for our guest, please, Karin," he says "And tell Suigetsu the flue needs cleaning."

"He knows," mutters Karin, pouring a steaming cup and setting it in front of Kabuto. "This is the third time this week you've had me remind him."

"What was that?"

"Oh, nothing!" She shoots a hard look at Kabuto, as though daring him to say otherwise.

"How do you take your tea?" asks Orochimaru.

"Black is fine." Karin promptly abandons his cup for Orochimaru's, ladling in a generous spoonful of honey, stirring once, then abandoning the spoon on the tray and bustling back out the door. Kabuto hears her bellow down the hall as soon as she assumes she's out of earshot, calling for Suigetsu.

"I apologize for her demeanor. Karin has little respect for strangers, guest in my home or no." Orochimaru sips his tea, and grimaces. "I'm sure she'll adjust to your presence."

"You make it sound as though I'll be spending quite a bit of time here." The tea is bitter, and bites at the back of Kabuto's throat like a stray dog. If he happens to catch the girl later, he'll ask after the mixture.

"If our negotiations proceed favorably." Several more spoonfuls of honey make their way into Orochimaru's cup, and after his third taste he sighs, satisfied. "I am entering," he says, leaning forward, "a new stage of my work. Highly experimental, and naturally quite private. I need someone capable of tending to me in an emergency, should I injure myself in the process." He narrows his eyes. "Preferably someone discreet."

"You'd like me to keep my mouth shut," says Kabuto flatly. It's a request he's been given before, usually by clients involved in more unsavory activities. The gang members who'd be snapped up by law enforcement the moment they stepped foot inside a hospital; the addicts coming down from a near-fatal overdose who'd prefer to keep their families in the dark.

Orochimaru chuckles. "You do catch on quickly."

"I wouldn't still be alive if I didn't. What's the nature of the work?"

"Nothing illegal, I assure you."

"Oh," says Kabuto, "that wouldn't be a problem. I'm just curious to know what I'm getting into."

"As I said," says Orochimaru, shrugging, "I dabble. And there are many...volatile substances that do as they see fit no matter how many precautions are taken. As for the secrecy—well. You see where I choose to live. I prefer to keep myself and my work at a distance from the public."

"But you trust me."

"You have a reputation. And," Orochimaru continues, "as you operate independently, no obligation to report on my condition to higher-level medical staff, or temptation to gossip about it otherwise." He smiles thinly. "The nurses of the general ward are quite a talkative bunch."

"If they were hired for their discretion, the hospital would be short-staffed within the week." Only one of the reasons he no longer cares to associate with them. "How long have you lived here?" he asks. "If you don't mind the inquiry."

"A number of years," says Orochimaru blithely. "Since after the Wall."

Plenty of refugees fled to the cities to escape the calamity outside them—the _bijuu_ , beasts that descended from beyond the world, rampaging unfettered, unsympathetic. And the things they carried with them: earthquake, plague, wells and rivers clogged with black algae. Children born rabid, biting the fingers of the midwives. But even now there's a look that sets them apart from the ones who grew up inside the walls. A certain hollowness to the eyes that accompanies the knowledge that your old home is lost, possibly forever.

Orochimaru isn't hollow. He has the air of someone who's _settled_ , like silt at the bottom of a deep pond. Whatever he's left behind, it's now irrelevant—or never mattered in the first place.

Kabuto is hollow, but it's a different sort. There are empty spaces made by filling and then taking away. And there are those where it's impossible to say what was there to begin with. His memories begin and end with Konoha, and the Wall, and that's fine, isn't it?

And yet—he can't say he belongs here, because he doesn't know what brought him to Konoha to begin with. And he can't say he belongs with the refugees, because he doesn't know what it was he left behind.

(But that's fine.)

(Isn't it?)

"I wonder..." says Orochimaru. "What would it take, to buy exclusivity? For a month, say."

Kabuto chuckles, setting down his empty cup. "Really, now, you make me sound like a common harlot instead of a physician." But he gives a number—the combined amount his current regular clients pay, and then some. The amused smile on Orochimaru's face doesn't fade, as Kabuto has seen it do on countless other faces. "Would that be acceptable?"

"Not what I expected."

"Higher?"

"Lower. I was wondering why you looked practically starved, but that would certainly explain it." Kabuto doesn't correct him. It's not that he lacks the funds to eat well. Just the inclination.

"What did you have in mind, then?"

Orochimaru leans in and offers a number. It's substantial enough to make Kabuto's stomach curl at the thought of what he could do with that sort of money. Research grants don't come easy, and the directors at the university hospital are a curmudgeonly, watchdog-ish sort. The only time Kabuto appreciates someone peering over his shoulder is to compliment his work, and hardly even that.

"I'll need to think about it," he says. (He doesn't need to think about it.)

"Naturally," says Orochimaru. "It's quite a commitment. But I'd like an answer within the week, if possible."

"Of course."

Karin returns shortly, this time with cakes—which Kabuto politely declines—and another complaint about Suigetsu, which Orochimaru clicks his tongue at and promises to confront later.

Kabuto delves into the painful necessities of transaction: the timing of his payments; potential fees for extra services rendered, such as the treatment of Orochimaru's servants or the running of errands the household is unqualified to make; and suchlike. He learns, after the bare acceptable minimum of prying, that Orochimaru is a naturalist by study and by trade; a chemist, an alchemist, and a number of others by necessity and pure curiosity. To someone as singleminded as Kabuto, the number of interests is almost alarming, but it suggests a refreshing level of intelligence. No more clipping his explanations of tools and technique down to a few palty words because his client was incapable of comprehending the answer.

"What sort of injury are you expecting?" he asks.

"Nothing serious," says Orochimaru. "Only...a little strange, perhaps."

"I meant specifically," says Kabuto. "So I can better prepare in advance. Chemical burns? Inhalation of fumes?" He frowns. "Animal bites?" Rabies makes for frustrating and violent medicine; he prefers to avoid it entirely if he can.

"The way you talk, I'd say you've already made your decision to treat me."

"Some opportunities are worth the trouble. Some aren't. Can you blame me for wanting to know what sort this is?" Kabuto smiles thinly. "But I do enjoy a challenge." Provided its the right sort. There are challenging patients, the treatment of which is like pulling teeth—to use a cross-disciplinary metaphor—and then there are patients who present a challenge; a puzzle. The sort it's practically impossible to turn down. Hippocratic oath demands the doctor do no harm, but in cases like these even death is too much of a fascination to cause him any sort of grief.

"And that," says Orochimaru, standing, "is the sort of mindset that encouraged me to seek you out. You have a taste for the..." He pauses. "Experimental."

"So it would seem."

"In a week, then," says Orochimaru. "Your answer."

"In a week," agrees Kabuto.

* * *

On his way out, Kabuto pauses in the foyer to investigate the mazelike curves of a serpentine vase, hosting a clump of drooping violets.

"I see you admiring my choice in decor," says Orochimaru, peering over his shoulder. "It is odd, isn't it?"

"Nothing wrong with snakes," says Kabuto, instinctively wiping a smear of dust from the rim with his thumb. He's seen stranger.

"Oh, no. Not snakes." Orochimaru pulls a slim volume from a nearby bookcase and flips through the pages, settling on an illustrated spread with lines so dense the pages are nearly black. "Not quite." He holds out the book and Kabuto takes it, Orochimaru's fingers brushing against his with the delicacy of a spider's web—and the clinginess. Something about the skin. Kabuto grimaces, and peers at the image: a massive serpent (black, he assumes, though the artist was clearly more concerned with form than accuracy), or something like it. Rows of scales coiling in on themselves, parting to reveal an intimate flash of eye, of tooth, of gaping maw. The inscription below it reads—

"Manda?"

"A lesser _bijuu_. Tied to the cycle of consumption and rebirth, if the various texts are to be believed—this included, of course."

Kabuto flips idly through the rest of the pages, each illustration somehow more chaotic than the last. "Consumption hardly seems the sort of thing to lead to rebirth." In the masses of ink he makes out earthly forms: toad, slug, serpent again. The _bijuu_ imitate the shapes of the natural world, as though trying to force their way into a puzzle they know they are not a part of. "In my line of work," he adds, almost snidely, "it tends to lead to fits, fever, and suffocation."

"What luck, then" says Orochimaru, "that you have someone outside of it to educate you. You've heard of the concept of the Ouroboros?"

He clicks his tongue."Of course. The serpent that devours its own tail."

Orochimaru plucks the books from his hands and opens it, almost automatically, to another page peppered with diagrams—among them, of course, the Ouroborus. "An infinite cycle. The serpent devours and destroys himself, and gives birth to himself. Consumption and rebirth," he repeats.

Kabuto nods in a semblance of appreciation. He's toiled through his fair share of philosophy and religious courses—university requirements; not out of much personal interest—and while he has the head for the stuff, there seems little point to wasting his time on what he can't see. The hypothetical and speculative are only much use when you're given a way to physically test them. "Seems rather uncharacteristic for a naturalist to have such a fixation on the otherworldly," he notes.

"Well," says Orochimaru, "they walk the earth, so they certainly seem to be a part of it now, don't they. It would be more uncharacteristic of me to _not_ pay attention to them." He snaps the book shut and tucks it back in place on the shelf with a practiced motion. "Surely you aren't without your odd little hobbies, doctor?"

Kabuto shrugs. "I have my work."

"That's all?"

"I don't need anything else." And it's true—when he's not treating patients, there are tools to clean and supplies to acquire; medicines to make and research to do. An outside observer might call him obsessive; a workaholic—and they'd be right. But it isn't like he has any alternative.

"Such a singleminded life you lead, doctor," says Orochimaru, and little else, as he escorts Kabuto to the door.

"I'll inform you of my decision within the next few days," says Kabuto.

"Oh, do," says Orochimaru. "Do."

Kabuto doesn't look back as he starts down the drive, but he never hears a lock click, and knows Orochimaru must be watching him go. It's an unsettling feeling. Were the circumstances any different, he might reject the job on principal. Criminals are all very predictable in their tendencies; strange men in houses on the hill are another sort of breed entirely. Naturalists or not.

But the money...

It's not just the money, if he's honest. Something about the house, about Orochimaru himself, has a curious draw—as much as they fill him with a curious revulsion. Like sinking down into a deep pond, hoping to find the bottom with your feet. The sensation of silt and water weeds brushing against your ankles is unsettling, certainly, but not as unsettling as the thought that the pond might not have a bottom at all.

He has to touch the bottom, now that he's started the descent.

Something else to ponder on the slog home through three bus rides and a slum.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** its been a year and a half god i am so fucking sorry. anyways this fic aint dead it was just fermenting. like a cheese. have some suigetsu for your troubles.

* * *

It begins in Suna. Or: it begins long before Suna, but Suna is where Shukaku, the first _bijuu_ , sinks his claws into the earth, changing it irrevocably.

When the dust had settled, there were nine, and Konoha sat securely behind its walls and spouted soldiers and sympathies. Soldiers for the things that could still be salvaged. Sympathies for what could not. Kabuto was not yet old enough to understand the horrors of an unwinnable war, but he understood limps and battered limbs, and painstakingly sutured cuts under his mother's watchful eyes.

All you could do was hide and lick at your wounds, and hope the enemy would pass you over for a more vulnerable target.

It's not the _bijuu_ that are responsible for his current occupation, but to say he's escaped their influence entirely fails to give credit where it's due. Orochimaru seems much the same way: a man of science, his portrait of the natural world disrupted by the beasts forcing their way into the frame.

Kabuto sends his response two days after their first meeting. Long enough to suggest careful contemplation, but not so long as to imply misgivings. Loath is he to suggest to a client that he might be the sort to _fret_. The reply is prompt and blunt: pack whatever tools and amenities he deems necessary (anything overlooked can be provided), and Suigetsu will come around to retrieve him on Sunday. Personal physicians, apparently, are worthy of private transportation, while ordinary doctors are not. (Unless Orochimaru is merely sending him company to lessen the slog of the countless bus rides. Really, he shouldn't have.)

It becomes apparent when the designated chauffeur arrives that he really, _really_ shouldn't have.

"Thought you'd have more stuff," says Suigetsu, chewing at his lower lip as he contemplates Kabuto's luggage from the gutter. His snaggletooth bobs ungracefully up and down. Kabuto tries not to look at it. "They got big machines, up at the hospice."

"That," says Kabuto stiffly, "is an iron lung, and god willing, your master won't need it. In fact, if he did, he'd have moved significantly _beyond_ the services I provide."

"Maybe you oughta get one, then." Suigetsu picks up one suitcase in each hand and hoists them off the ground with strength his gangly form doesn't suggest. "He gets real picky about that stuff."

"Does he."

Suigetsu shuffles back over to the car, and stops, staring pensively at the trunk. "Could you open that?"

"I could."

"It's just—don't wanna put these down. Now I've gone to the effort, and all."

"Naturally."

"So—"

"Yes, fine."

He doesn't get it on the first try, which is unacceptable.

"Oh," says Suigetsu, leaning over his shoulder, "there's like, an extra thing at the bottom that you need to press. I can get it—" One of Kabuto's bags hits the ground with a metallic clatter, and he grits his teeth; that'll be the tools.

"No." He all but slaps away Suigetsu's helping hand. "It's fine." He presses down on the latch and the door swings open, but the damage to his pride has already been done.

His bags are wedged between a stack of newspaper-wrapped packages and a crate marked FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE, though judging by its state and the inverted THIS END UP warning on the adjacent side, the instruction has been wholeheartedly ignored. The trunk shuts with a sound that does nothing to assuage Kabuto's fears of it flying open halfway down the street, and Suigetsu claps his hands free of nonexistent grime.

"Back seat's all full up, too," he says. "Of the other stuff I had to pick up on the way here. You'll have to take the front."

A cursory glance through the window reveals more newspaper-wrapped bundles, a partially-wilted bouquet of flowers, and two bamboo cages containing a pair of rather emaciated chickens.

Kabuto steels himself for what looks like it's going to be a very long day.

* * *

Suigetsu does not drive like a maniac, but he drives like the twice-removed cousin of one. Kabuto grips the edges of his seat as the car careens around a corner, narrowly missing a pedestrian and colliding head-on with three potholes in a row, each more jarring than the last. He can feel his teeth rattling in his skull, and his skull rattling on its atlas. This has to be some sort of test. There's no conceivable way Orochimaru would hire someone so inept, unless, as Kabuto is beginning less to suspect and more to understand, he never leaves his home.

It wouldn't be so bad if he were allowed the luxury of travelling in silence. But along with driving ability, Suigetsu also lacks any sort of filter, a fact which Kabuto is beginning to rapidly and unpleasantly become acquainted with.

"So you're a doctor?" asks Suigetsu, swiveling around another corner. He's eschewed the main roads in favor of a maze of alleys that all look identical, but which the man seems to know like the back of his hand.

"Yes," says Kabuto, through gritted teeth. The chickens scream from the back seat, and he thinks about wringing their necks.

"What's that like?"

"It's fine."

"You cut up a lot of people?"

"When the need calls for it, but I wouldn't say—"

"Bet it smells really bad."

Kabuto grunts noncommittally. It's never the living bodies that smell unpleasant (a whiff of raw meat, the metallic tang of blood; the chalky, burnt stench of freshly-sawed bone) but rather, the things inside them—infection, bacteria. The dead stink one of three ways: of exploded bowels, of rotting flesh, of preservatives. The fourth way involves powders and perfumes, but Kabuto never steps foot inside of funeral homes if he can help it. It'd be easy—possibly almost enjoyable—to explain these things, but disgust comes dime-a-dozen. Kabuto prefers appreciation when he can get it, and that won't be from Suigetsu.

The car idles to a halt at an intersection, and the stink of smog and offal wafts through the slightly-cracked window as a truck holding a cargo of squealing pigs trundles past. He almost wishes that were his transport instead.

Almost.

But, since Suigetsu seems so eager to talk, it'd be foolish not to make the most of a bad situation. "How long have you worked for Orochimaru?" he asks.

"Aw, y'know, I don't really remember. More than five years, probably, and Karin's been there longer than I have. And Kimimaro, even though he's not really a _servant_ , y'know, and Guren, except she left right when I got there, which Karin says is probably my fault, but—"

"Guren?"

"Yeah. Dunno what her problem was. She was kind of a—"

"And does Orochimaru involve you in his work?"

"Nah. Karin does all the cleaning in the lab. I used to do some of it but apparently that one specimen I broke was real important-like to the boss. So they don't let me in there anymore."

Kabuto grunts noncommittally, interest lost. "But they let you drive."

"Who else is gonna?"

Who else indeed.

* * *

He's given a room on the second story, just down the hall from Orochimaru's own; bare except for a wardrobe, a nightstand, and a freshly-made bed. The view through the window is blocked by the bulk of a large magnolia, but it's not a terrible loss. They'd taken what Suigetsu had called the "scenic route" up the hill—shorthand for unpaved roads and a landscape that was not so much bleak as simply boring. Konoha slumped across the valley like an idle mudlark, dotted with rust-red roofs and copses of trees. The slow tramp of industry out of Iwa and Amegakure had stumbled, then stalled entirely at its borders with the rising of the Wall, and the shells of abandoned factories littered the city like insect carcasses.

Kabuto idly brushes several off the windowsill as he unpacks: junebugs, drying up with the last dregs of summer. Emptying his luggage takes little time; he hasn't brought much with him. Clothes, toiletries, the work pertaining to his current research, some light reading material—although, once Orochimaru informs him he is free to browse his personal collection, he doubts he'll make much headway through any of it.

"Consider it a perk of the job," he says, watching Kabuto fold shirts into the top of the dresser. "If I'm to be stealing so much of your precious time, it'd be inconsiderate of me not to give you ways to fill it."

"And just how much do you estimate you'll be stealing?"

"Only a month or so—as I said. However long it takes for my work to run its course." The mysterious, injurious work—which Orochimaru had not so much explained as hinted at, revealing enough corners for Kabuto to construct the thing in his mind and assume he knew the shape of it. "You'd like to see my laboratory, I presume."

Kabuto does his best to tamp down the spark of excitement that flares in his chest. "Of course," he says, shutting the drawer. "Always good to be familiar with the thing responsible for the damages."

Orochimaru laughs. "But not too familiar, I hope."

The lab connects to the house, but is not a part of it—almost tacked on as an afterthought, though the grey stain of the wood suggests it's long outlasted the fleeting plans prompting its construction. The walls arch towards a glass ceiling run across with thick, unfinished crossbeams. Skeletons dangle from the rafters, too high to be of any practical use: birds and small mammals; what looks like the remains of a two-headed cow. Orochimaru's hoard of oddities extends even into his workspace.

The room hosts an organized chaos, one Kabuto is very familiar with. Papers atop of books atop of papers, shuffled into precarious stacks on every available surface. There's no clear divide between the natural, chemical, and medical, jars of sulfur and sodium tucked alongside carefully-preserved specimens and observational equipment. A large blackboard covered in spidery handwriting looms over it all.

Out of the corner of his eye he catches Orochimaru observing his reaction, and does his best to keep his face neutral.

"I assume you have some sort of system to all of this?"

Orochimaru _tuts_. "Are you to subject me to your organizational sensibilities as well as your medical ministrations?" He plucks a sheaf of parchment from a mostly-empty shelf beside Kabuto's head and rifles idly through it as he speaks. "I know where everything is. Whether anyone else does is of little importance. Much easier to keep prying eyes away from what's important to you, I find," he says, tucking the papers beneath a dusty glass decanter, "if it's indiscernible from the mundane."

"Do you expect many eyes to come prying?"

"You must have projects of your own that you prefer to keep to yourself, no?" He makes his way over to what Kabuto recognizes as an embalming table, tucked against the far wall. Its surface is weathered and heavily-stained, already hosting an assortment of needles and a small packet wrapped in newspaper. "Announcing the results of your research does little good when someone else beats you to the proverbial punch."

Kabuto grunts noncommittally and trails after him, positioning himself to watch Orochimaru go about his work without craning his neck. Donning a pair of rubber gloves, his employer gently unwraps the package, a thin white fog spilling out around him. The thing he places on the table reads, for a moment, as some disgustingly pale and sinuous worm; it is, Kabuto quickly realizes, a snake. Quite dead, but not yet rotting, thanks to—

"Dry ice?"

It's a relatively new invention—used primarily by hospitals and universities to transport specimens. That Orochimaru would have some in his possession is by no means surprising, but it always pays to know the means of acquisition, in case of personal emergencies.

Orochimaru nods, and spares Kabuto a passing glance. "You don't mind if I work." His tone suggests that the work will proceed regardless of the answer.

"I'm not squeamish."

"I wouldn't have thought," says Orochimaru. From a glass-fronted case beside the table he removes a jar filled three-quarters up with a pale yellow liquid, along with a small stoppered vial. His gaze skates across the mostly-empty shelves, and he frowns. "Kimimaro, where did I leave—"

The soft clattering of glassware rises from behind a tangle of equipment, and Kimimaro emerges to place a third jar, bulbous and empty, onto the table. He looks, somehow, more sickly than before, the skin around his eyes sunken and jaundiced. Kabuto watches him vanish back into the stacks with mild concern. The boy's walk has a new wobble to it.

"You said it was something in the bones," he says, turning to Orochimaru. "What, exactly?"

"Cancer of the blood-producing tissues," says Orochimaru, busying himself with the hypodermic needle. "Resulting in anemia, among other things. You've seen how pale he is." He plunges it through the cap of the vial, and the red creeps down into the barrel of the syringe: embalming fluid.

"And the treatment?"

"A sort of chemical therapy. Folic acid derivatives and nitrogen mustard, primarily."

Kabuto raises an eyebrow. "That's a toxin."

Orochimaru nods. "A very effective one." He gently lifts the head of the snake and pricks the needle into it just between the eyes; then again at the neck, and methodically down the rest of the body.

"Tell me, then, is it his illness that's killing him, or is it you?"

Orochimaru's mouth presses into a hard line, and his grip on the syringe tightens incrementally. "You don't approve of my methods."

"I'm not sure I understand them well enough to disapprove, so please," says Kabuto. "By all means. Enlighten me."

"Well. At least you have the decency to inquire further before decrying me. Some of my colleagues were not nearly so receptive, when I first broached the subject." He sniffs. "Clearly a third-level degree does not a competent physician make." Setting down the syringe, Orochimaru turns and leans casually against the table. "How acquainted are you with the military response to the first wave of _bijuu_?"

Kabuto shrugs. "Not particularly. Wartime history has never been of much interest to me."

"When traditional means failed, they opted for chemical warfare in a fit of desperation. The primary weapon—"

"Ah," says Kabuto, nodding. "Mustard gas. I'm familiar with the exposure symptoms. There was a wave of civilian casualties, wasn't there? Refugees passing through the affected areas who didn't realize what they'd walked through until it was too late." He grimaces. "I've never had the misfortune to treat it, but the medical textbooks provided some terribly pleasant photographs of the victims." Clusters of boils and drooping skin, the patients' disfigured faces a black stain against the hospital sheets. It was sometimes difficult to say, in those days, where the harm done by _bijuu_ ended and that done by humans began.

"The effects are more than external," says Orochimaru. "Internally, exposure leads to drastic reduction of the white blood-cell count—or any somatic cell."

"Cancerous cells."

"Precisely."

"And the folic acid derivatives?"

"A similar effect." He shrugs blithely. "I doubt Kimimaro will ever fully recover, but provided I can continue to administer the therapy, he'll certainly live longer than he might have otherwise."

"Seems a bit of a miserable existence," says Kabuto.

"But better than no existence at all."

"Have you asked?"

"If he'd rather die?" Orochimaru raises a perfectly-painted eyebrow. "He's only a child. It's one thing to come to terms with your inevitable death. It's quite another to be asked whether you'd like that inevitable to come now, or later." He chuckles. "And I imagine most people would choose later."

"Clearly you've never visited the terminal ward."

"You have a rather bleak view of the world, don't you, doctor." Orochimaru's eyes flicker with amusement as he returns to his work, coiling the serpent into the empty jar. Its body is bloated from embalming fluid, scales stained faintly pink where it's oozed through the gaps.

"Hardly," says Kabuto, wrinkling his nose. "Just realistic." He's no pessimist; he simply prefers to avoid the inevitable disappointment that accompanies always expecting the best. Having hope is all very well, but it never did much in the way of keeping someone alive when what they needed was a treatment that didn't yet exist. (The world, he thinks, would be better off if it learned to respond to every problem the way it had to the _bijuu_ —initial panic gradually dampened by the slow creep of resignation. Insisting that someday, somehow, things would be better than they were only led to feeling sorry for oneself in the meantime, which accomplished little.)

He's also beginning to remember why he stopped offering mortuary services.

Still, his curiosity ever takes the reigns over his indigence: "How did you come to the final treatment? Surely Kimimaro wasn't your first subject."

"There were several rounds of initial tests before I subjected him to the results," says Orochimaru. The stink of formaldehyde drifts past him as he fills up the jar until the serpent drowns in it. "You can spare me your ethical quandaries, doctor."

"Not on humans, I assume."

"Oh no," says Orochimaru. He holds up his freshly-preserved specimen up to the light, turning the jar one way and the other to admire its carefully-coiled contents. Through the glass his face bulges unnaturally, as though something just under the skin were on the verge of bursting out. His smile is thin and viperous. "Only rats."

* * *

Kabuto doesn't see much of his employer in the days, and then weeks, that follow, their time together in the lab a quirk of his arrival, not an indication of things to come. Not that it matters much. He's still getting paid (once a week, delivered to his room in an envelope by Karin), and the lack of obligation leaves him plenty of opportunities to focus on his own work and peruse Orochimaru's substantial collection.

Many books he recognizes from the university library. Some are the same copies: outdated editions, their inside covers marked with a large red DISCARD. Others are so unfamiliar as to be unreadable: yellowing manuscripts in Arabic, Sanskrit, Aramaic. Assuming Orochimaru can understand them, and isn't simply a man rounding out his collection of oddities, Kabuto allows himself to be slightly impressed.

It's not that he minds the isolation. It's simply that now, given a patient of actual interest, it's almost disappointing to see so little of him.

(They do dine together, occasionally—he and Orochimaru and Kimimaro, who eats little and says even less, but hangs in a state of perpetual half-life rather than slowly wasting away. Proof enough that Orochimaru's treatment apparently works, and he seems to make a point of inquiring after the boy's health where Kabuto can hear the answer.)

He makes his way methodically through the medical and naturalistic sections of the collection before he comes, at last, to the supernatural: the _bijuu_. It's a small assortment, but substantial compared to elsewhere. The university library's collection had been all but wiped out several years previously by government measures meant to discourage "unnatural practices and fraternizations." Clearly, what it had actually discouraged was: not much.

The illustrated volume from before is where he remembers, and it's the first of a stack of several. He leaves them in a nearby armchair he has no intention of sitting in. Spending too long outside his room leaves him with the prickle of watchful eyes on the back of his neck. Not of any malevolent force, simply—

"What are you doing?" Karin stands in the doorway, gaze needly. There's a duster dangling from one hand, and her apron is streaked with grime.

"Something wrong, clearly, for you to be so suspicious of me," says Kabuto, flipping through a documentation of _bijuu_ -related incidents from the past decade. Long lists of statistics—death tolls, time between attacks. Nothing of much interest. "Orochimaru did give me permission to browse while I was here."

"Well," sniffs Karin, squeezing behind him to run the duster along the upper shelves, "just put everything back where you found it. I'm not here to pick up after you."

Kabuto shoots her a disparaging look over his shoulder as he snaps the book shut. "You don't have a very high opinion of me, do you."

"Should I? You haven't done anything yet."

"Your master hasn't exactly given me much to do. Or should I tell him his servants are hoping for an accident?"

Karin clicks her tongue. "Lord Orochimaru doesn't have a history of making good hiring choices. I mean—" She glances surreptitiously towards the doorway and drops her voice to an almost conspiratorial level. "You've _met_ Suigetsu. If anyone was going to have an accident, it should be him."

"Is that what happened to Guren?"

"How do you—" She grimaces. "Ugh. Blabbermouth. 'Course he brought her up. She was one of Orochimaru's assistants—like, a _real_ assistant, not like what the rest of us do."

"And?" prompts Kabuto.

"She left," says Karin. "Good riddance." It sounds like the end, but she sways thoughtfully back and forth before continuing: "Which was _weird_ , when it happened," she says, "because—she actually _liked_ it here, I think. She liked Lord Orochimaru—looked up to him, I mean. I don't know what she actually worked on. Didn't care. She wasn't—" Karin pauses. "—very _nice_ ," she decides.

"Suigetsu said something similar."

"Oh, I'll bet he did." Karin spins on her heel and resumes dusting with renowned vigor, as though the barely-palpable brush of feathers will cover up her gossip. "Anyways, it wasn't an accident. She wasn't _injured_ , or anything—well, maybe emotionally?—she just packed up and left. We were all devastated, obviously."

Kabuto rolls his eyes. "Do all members of Orochimaru's household enjoy dancing around the point?"

"Even if I knew what happened—and I don't—it's none of your business." The duster jabs abruptly into his face. "Even if you _were_ her replacement."

He pushes it aside, tamping down a sneeze. "...is that what you thought?"

"You could've been, but considering you've just been moping around instead of doing any actual _work_ —"

"I'm not _moping_."

"Well, you're bored as hell. Even I can see that." A shrug. "But the money's good, right? That's why you stick around." She pauses. "That's why most of us stick around."

"Is there a reason you'd want to leave?" says Kabuto.

"Not really," says Karin, too quickly. "Move, I need to—" As she ducks past him, her left arm brushes against his chest, and she hisses between her teeth and stutters, ever so briefly, to a halt.

Kabuto steps back, eyebrows raised. "Something the matter?"

Karin shakes her head. "It's nothing. None of your business." Her knuckles are white around the handle of the duster.

"You're clearly in pain, so I'd say it _is_ my business. Especially as your master has explicitly hired me to treat him _and_ his household." He yanks up her sleeve before she can protest, revealing an arm wrapped in bandages done too tightly in some places, and too loosely in others. "Did you do this?"

Karin nods.

"Well. It'll have to be un-done." He drops her wrist, and she pulls her arm close to her chest. "Go wait in the kitchen. And don't touch it, you've likely exacerbated it enough as it is."

He returns to his room with Orochimaru's books tucked under one arm, and departs with his medical bag and a spare towel from the closet. The kitchen sits in the depths of the house, full of tepid heat from the furnace and an oven still smoldering with the burnt remains of lunch. Suigetsu had shown it to him shortly after his arrival, "In case you wanna grab yourself a midnight snack or something. Karin doesn't like it, but, uh, just don't get caught, okay? And don't tell her I told you." As though there would be any other suspects.

Watery light slinks through the narrow windows above the cabinets, scarcely enough to work by even at midday. Karin glowers at him from a chair by the sink, and he pulls up a second one across from her; towel in his lap, bag on the floor.

"Give me your arm."

Karin doesn't watch while he peels the badges away. They're freckled with blood and stained a sickly brown. A crust of yellowed scabs flakes away from the underside. He grimaces. Not infected, but coming close to it. It'd smell worse if there was a real problem.

He's expecting some sort of self-mutilation or marks of abuse. Injuries easier to squirrel away inadequately than discuss out in the open. It's neither of those. What it is: long, bloody furrows dragged through the skin, almost like a rope burn—and that's what he'd think it was, if not for the uneven rows of holes peppering the edges.

"What is this?" Potential sources: mechanical, animal, chemical (unlikely). "A machine injury?" Silence. He rifles through his bag, and the other potential options. "Does Orochimaru keep animals somewhere on the grounds?" The lab had been empty of living specimens, but that didn't mean there wasn't a collection somewhere in the garden, or elsewhere. Menageries, for all their use, did smell something unsightly.

"No," says Karin flatly.

He couldn't imagine an animal with that sort of bite pattern, anyways. "I'm not going to tattle on you if you've been handling things you shouldn't. But—"

"It doesn't matter. Just—fix it, right? That's what you're here for. Said so yourself."

Kabuto clicks his tongue. "Well. If that's the way you're going to be."

He cleans it, first with soap and warm water, and then with peroxide, which Karin grits her teeth through and claims "stings like a bitch." But she's a decent enough patient otherwise, and when he's finished winding on the fresh bandages she jerks her arm away, yanks down her sleeve, and practically bolts towards the door.

"You'll need to change the bandages periodically," he remarks after her. "With a wound like that."

She shoots him a disparaging look. "I've seen you do it now, haven't I? I can manage myself. "

He shrugs. "Have it your way, then."

The old bandages he buries in the garbage, beneath a layer of potato peelings and newspaper to cover the stench. The towel, spotted with blood, he stuffs in his pocket, to deposit later into the laundry. He's only just finished packing the rest of his tools when a movement in the doorway catches his eye: Orochimaru, leaning casually against the frame, head tilted back to gaze down the hall.

"I must admit," his employer remarks, "I'm surprised to catch you alone in a room with my household staff so quickly."

Kabuto snaps his bag shut. "I'm hardly the sort to fool about with other people's servants."

Orochimaru raises an eyebrow. "Only the servants?"

"It'd be unethical to do anything otherwise." He purses his lips. "She has a rather curious injury. Karin."

"Does she?"

"I treated it. It shouldn't develop an infection, provided she keeps her hands out of the muck. Does she make a habit of running off at night?"

"What are you suggesting about my servants, doctor?"

"Oh, nothing unseemly. But if they're keeping things hidden—"

Orochimaru sighs, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand. "Karin has always been rather headstrong. She doesn't care for other people thinking her weak."

"There's quite a difference between obstinacy and pure foolishness," says Kabuto hotly. "If an injury like that had gone untreated for long enough, she might have lost her arm." And dangerous experiments or not, he can't imagine that Orochimaru would care to employ him for much longer after that.

"Then it's a good thing you were here to catch it, hm?" Orochimaru begins to withdraw from the doorway, fingers trailing along the frame. "I'll have a talk with her. You can be sure you'll be notified of any future incidents."

"And the cause, if she tells you?"

"If she tells me," echoes Orochimaru.

Kabuto bends to collect his bag, and when he raises his head again, the man is gone, and a curious stench lingers in the door. Not the garbage. It's the smell from before, now almost stifling: something buried and rotten, slinking up from between the floorboards. It follows him out of the kitchen and down the hall, even as he meanders back to his room, and eventually, to bed.

Not for the first time since setting foot in the house, he dreams uncomfortable dreams.


End file.
